


Healed

by thisunrequitedlove



Series: For You, I'll Be Superhuman [1]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: I know, I promise, M/M, Poor Liam, Smut later guys, don't kill me british people, i'm sorry i overdo the britishisms okay, really hard, sorry - Freeform, the chapters are short okay, there's some larry if you squint, with a magnifying glass, you're all going to hate me at the end of this ha
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-18
Updated: 2012-12-24
Packaged: 2017-11-21 12:05:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/597556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisunrequitedlove/pseuds/thisunrequitedlove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All Liam's ever wanted to do is heal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea how the international cell phone system works and this hasn’t been Brit-picked because I’m just a hopeless American Anglophile. I guess I also think I’m Shakespeare and I have a large influence on the English lexicon because about 50% of the words used in this fic don’t actually exist.

_I can’t keep doing this because I’m dying._

That’s what Liam thinks when he sees Niall tumble from the stage on a Wednesday night show, arms forward to break the four foot fall.

There’s a hush; the drums come clattering to a halt and the guitar strings vibrate into silence.  Liam hasn’t had this many quiet teenage girls in his presence since he became famous, and he’d really be able to appreciate it were it not for this little internal battle he’s fighting.

He sees every part of the fall, how Niall’s arm bends backwards unnaturally when he hits the ground, and though he doesn’t exactly hear the crack, he senses it, _feels_ it in his own shoulder.

There’s a scream, faint, somewhere off in the back, and the eerie serenity of a silent venue filled with thousands of people erupts into a chaotic explosion.  It’s a different kind of screaming now, screams of alarm, panic, _dread_ ,and Liam can see the writhing mass of dark bodies before him surging forward.

The bodyguards are doing a pretty good job at protecting Niall, given they’ve never been in a situation quite like this.  The girls were insane before, but now they’re absolutely _mental_ , literally tearing through each other to get a glimpse of their fallen angel, make sure he’s alright.  This madness goes on for the longest 10 seconds Liam’s ever suffered through before a seemingly unscathed blonde head pops up, a reassuring grin plastered on his face.

“I’m fine, don’t worry about me!” Niall says, his voice carrying out over his hands-free microphone and into the audience.  He holds his hands up, “See, fit as a whistle!” but Liam’s close enough to see the wince he conceals appallingly well when he moves his arm too fast.  The screams melt into cheers as the guards help Niall back up, and this cheeky shit, he hops to center stage, turns around and _bows_ like this was all part of the show, an elaborate ploy to keep everyone on the edges of their seats (or the tips of their toes, because who’s really sitting anyway?).

They continue on to the next song, then the next, and then it’s time for their last costume change.  The backstage hands are fighting to get to Niall, medics and members of their management team crowding around him to make sure he’s okay, to tell him _you’ve done more than enough tonight, Niall, really, we’re so proud of you for finishing the set but why don’t you sit this last one out?_   Maybe it’s the adrenaline and maybe it’s because this is his job and Niall just wants his audience to get their money’s worth, but he insists he’s alright, brushes off their worries without a second thought, says, “I’ll be fine, be out there what, five, ten more minutes max?  I won’t die, it’s _fiiiine_.”

He lifts his arm to slip out of his top and lets out a little unexpected gasp, eyes widening because he knows everyone’s already watching him too closely and he doesn’t want to give them any more reason to worry.  He slaps on a smile (grimace, rather) and slides into his formal wear in deliberate silence.  Liam looks on but doesn’t say anything because he knows what he has to do.  He keeps telling himself he shouldn’t, Harry’s burn while he was taking the roast out of the oven last week was still recuperating, the longest he’s taken to recover to date, but this is serious.  He has to.

They run back on stage and Niall rocks _I Want_ ; his eyes shine and he’s a very good actor, that boy, but Liam knows.

He’s rushed to the hospital immediately after the show, where the Xrays show his shoulder’s broken in four places and bent horribly out of shape, dislocated.  Niall’s a trooper; he masks the pain with a forced straight face as the doctors pop it back into place, a sharp intake of breath the only outward signs he’s feeling anything at all.  They put him on heavy meds and tell Paul to make him take it easy for a few days.  All of their shows for the rest of the week are cancelled.

Later that night, when everyone’s tired from all the excitement and fallen off to sleep, Liam sneaks into Niall’s room and stands by the side of his bed, not exactly looming over him, more looking on warily.  The moonlight streaming through the window catches the shadows of Niall’s eyelashes against his cheeks and he’s snoring lightly and he just looks so _peaceful_.  Too peaceful.  He’ll wake up and all that pain will shoot through him and Liam mentally admonishes himself (again) because he needs to _stop_ before he really hurts himself.  His body heals itself slower every time and some of the more serious injuries never really go away, he’s got the patches of scars on his arms and legs as testimony.

But his boys have always come first, so maybe doing it just this one last time won’t hurt.

He reaches out a hand to brush a stray hair from Niall’s face, then keeps his palm pressed against his forehead.  Under his night shirt, he sees the bruising on Niall’s shoulder fade from a purplish blue back into its usual pasty white.  He feels the bones in his own shoulder crack and the muscles tear, bites into his other knuckle to muffle any unexpected cries of pain because broken shoulders _hurt_.  Liam can normally feel when someone’s fully healed, but that sense has been fading recently, too, so he has to rely mostly on the visual.  When it looks like Niall’s shoulder is fully functional and he can barely move his own, he takes his arm away, holds it close to his body like a broken paw, and slides quickly and quietly out of the room without a trace.

The next morning, Niall wakes up, stretches the kinks out of his neck and pops his shoulder then stops because _he shouldn’t be able to do that._   He practically flies to Paul’s room, wakes up the entire hall with his reckless pounding on the thick hotel door.

“What the bloody hell do you want at arse o’clock in the morning, Hor—“ and his irritation is quickly replaced with something like stunned flabbergast as he follows the movement of Niall’s arm with widened eyes.  “Wait, but how are you.  How is your.  What did you.  What.”

They rush him back to the hospital and his Xrays show he’s the picture of health; it’s as though the last 12 hours never happened at all, as though it was all just a dream.  Doctors are stunned; they ask Niall for blood samples and tissues samples and they ask if they can study him and poke and prod but Niall refuses vehemently because, “Ain’t nobody got time for that.”  He’s elated when he leaves, pesters his driver to pick up some KFC for breakfast or something on the way back to the hotel in celebration.

“Lads!  Wake up, wake up, lookit me arm!  I’m all fixed!” he announces as he juggles the buckets and bags and jostles his way into his hotel room, where Harry, Louis, and Zayn are congregated.  “Brought us a proper feast!”

They rest of the boys cheer, too tired to actually wonder _what the actual fuck is happening_ , and reach out to help Niall settle in.  He bites into a chicken leg, then notices something.  “Where’s Liam?”

“Said his neck was bothering him, didn’t really wanna get out of bed,” Harry answers, sipping at his coke and spooning a forkful of mashed potatoes into his mouth.  “It’s really unlike him, hope he’s alright.”

“Liam’s a tough lad, made of steel,” Louis states confidently, “there is no pain Payne can’t handle.”

“Yeah, guess you’re right.”

Liam spends the day in his room, and by Friday he’s all healed and back to normal, but not really.


	2. Chapter 2

Liam’s always had this…thing.  _Gift_ , his mom had called it, but you normally like gifts, and when you don’t, you can return them.  It’s not like he doesn’t appreciate it, he _likes_ making people feel better, it’s in his nature, so when he’s five and his sister falls from the swings and he rushes to her side, puts his palm on the hand she’s got covering her knee and collapses with a sharp pain in his own, but then she’s jumping up and helping him back into the house, he just sees it as another way to make everyone around him happy.

One day when he’s seven, Liam’s mom sits him down and explains their lineage, how way back thousands of years ago [Asclepius](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Asclepius) popped up somewhere in the bloodline, and now one boy every five generations has this—

“Super power?” he asks eagerly.  He’d always wanted to be a superhero.

“Well, yeah, okay, we’ll call it that.  You have a super power, Liam, but you can’t just go around helping everyone like I know you’d like to, you’re only human.  You can heal people, but when you do, you—Liam!  Pay attention!” but he’d already lost interest, the object of his attention now a ladybug making its way across the windowpane.  He sees his cat (named Fluffy, much to his disdain, but he’s got sisters, what’s he going to do) coming up but it doesn’t really register until after she’s pounced on the innocent insect, killed it, and slinked away.

“No!  Bad Kitty!” he scolds, reaching out to the crushed lady bug but his mom holds him back.

“See Liam that’s what I mean, you have to listen to me!  You can heal and that’s all well and good, but when you heal someone, God, you take on their injury, right?  Your body is strong and you can recover fast, so you can say, heal someone with a broken toe and feel fine a few minutes later, but never try to bring anyone dead back to life, baby.”

“Why not, mummy?” and Liam’s eyes were wide and wet; he’d grown quite fond of that ladybug in the few seconds he’d known it.

“Because, Liam, I just, I don’t know what would happen, okay?  I don’t want anything to happen to you, so just listen to me and stay away from dead things.  Do you understand?”  She’d had a frantic firmness in her expression that was quite unlike the gentle demeanor he was used to, and he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t a little frightened.

“Yes, mum.”  He looked forlornly at the tissue his mother used to gather up the remains of the crushed ladybug.  Maybe super power wasn’t the best word to describe it.

 

~xXx~

 

Liam always knew in the back of his mind Zayn didn’t really get on with the right crowd before he was famous, and now that he had money, stature, he could basically do whatever he wanted.  Those red rimmed eyes weren’t a product of fatigue and exhaustion, as good as Zayn was at pretending.  He knew tobacco wasn’t the only smoke he smelled on Zayn when he came back from a particularly late night spent with Melissa and Ant.

The knowledge doesn’t make him love him any less, though.

“Zayn, you know I love you right?” Liam whispers into the warm skin of Zayn’s neck after he’s climbed back between their sheets.  It’s 3 a.m.

“Mm, love you, Li,” is Zayn’s slurred reply, and the thick smell of lung cancer assaulting Liam’s senses is laced with something more familiar, perhaps Vodka.  Liam frowns, but then his lips harden into a determined line.  He’ll get something through tonight.

“I love you so much, and I really think you should stop before you get hurt, I’d hate to see you hurt, Z.  Love you too much.  What you do is so dangerous.”  The silence burns his ears.  “Did you drive home by yourself?”

Zayn suddenly pulls away from where Liam’s got his arms wrapped tight around his waist and his fingertips rubbing circles into the small of his back with a huff.  “Stop babying me, Liam, you’re not my dad, I know how to take care of myself.”  He turns his back on him and pulls the covers up to his ears, effectively cutting Liam off and ending the discussion.  Liam sighs heavily, reaches over Zayn’s body to switch off the lamp, but as he goes, notices something on Zayn’s bicep.  A deep cut and, and is that a _bruise?_

“What happened to your arm?”  His voice is oozing concern and he knows it’s getting Zayn even more worked up but he can’t help it, can’t help how protective he is.

“S’nothing, Li, go to sleep.”  Zayn reaches across himself and finally shuts off the lamp, flushing them both in darkness.

Liam wraps his fingers around Zayn’s forearm, tangles their legs together and feels the dull ache in his own bicep form as he and Zayn fall off into troubled dreams.


	3. Chapter 3

It‘s a Saturday afternoon and they’ve just arrived in New York City to start preparing for their MSG gig.  Louis decides it’d be a fantastic idea to go see the sights “without those sodding Hulky body builders following our every move,” so he and Liam sneak out of the hotel through the kitchen and make their way to Times Square.

The thing is, they aren’t even doing anything to attract any attention.  They’d stopped at Starbucks for some lattes and as they’re walking out the door, Louis forgets to watch where he’s going and then he’s on the floor with a lap full of mocha.

“Oh, fuck, sorry!  I didn’t see you coming out and my friend here was distracting me with this dumb story and god you’ve made a mess all over your pants and—“ the pretty red head rambles, but then stops short.  Louis winces inwardly when he sees a bolt of recognition flash through her eyes as her jaw goes slack and her eyes open up impossibly wide.  “Wow, okay, um. Wow.  It’s you.  Hi.”

Before he can react, Liam’s swooping in, wrapping an arm around her shoulder.  The girl’s face practically lights on fire.  “Hello, love, what’s your name then?”

“Um, it’s um, uh, like, it’s Teresa?  Yeah.  Sorry, but like, if It’s like, not too much to ask and stuff, like, I’ve got this camera and, like, I don’t know maybe, like, we can…” she stutters, trails off and looks down, to the side, back to the people they’re blocking by standing in the doorway.

“’Course, babe.”  He extends a hand to help Louis up and Teresa and her friend follow them out the door and out of the way, because this is Manhattan and there can only be so many irritable New Yorkers held up from their morning coffee at any given point in time before some heads fly.

They take a few pictures and with a few hugs and kisses on the cheek, the girls wander off giddily.  Liam and Louis share a worried glance because _what if we’re recognized again before we get back to—_

“OH MY GOD, IT’S ONE DIRECTION!”  They don’t even turn around to see who screamed it, just start shuffling away as subtly as possible, but there are already heads turning all around and then there are small groups of girls clustering together and forming a crowd, then a mob, in this slow speed chase down Times Square, and god damnit this shit always happens in America.

A girl breaks out into a run and that’s when Liam and Louis know it’s time to go.

They speed up to a sprint, weaving through bodies with hurried “”Scuse us!”s and “Sorry!”s and search for back alleys and open doors to escape into.  A few particularly physically fit girls catch up to them, claw at their clothes and grab at their hats and hair.  Louis’ shirt rips with an audible tear, he lets out a little “Ow!” and Liam slips into an even more frenzied panic mode because what were they _thinking._  

Liam spots an open door up ahead and, without thinking, grabs Louis’ arm and slips them inside.  They back up against the wall facing the direction they were coming from and listen to the footsteps and screams rush by until they’re only faint shouts in the distance.

“Well,” Louis states, adjusting his shirt and kneeling down to tie his shoe, “that was—“

“You’re bleeding.”  Liam stares dumbly at the gaping wound in Louis’ back, at the blood soaking through his shirt.  He reaches out to touch the gash subconsciously, but jerks back.  _Not here._   “We’ve got to get you back to the hotel.”

“Oh, yeah, right, sounds easy enough, why don’t we just step outside and hail ourselves a taxi then, hm?”  Liam disregards his mocking tone because the gash in his back is really wide and he looks like he’s coping with the pain by being irritable and difficult.  “Have you forgotten where we are?  Our mobiles don’t even work, we’re stranded.”  He presses his thumb and forefinger to his eyes and huffs out a laugh, “You’re supposed to talk some sense into me when I want to do shit like this, Liam.”  He jerks his head up and shakes it, sways, blinks his eyes, but brushes it off, so Liam doesn’t think much of it.

They end up DMing Zayn and telling him to let Paul know where they are.  Ten mercifully fangirl-free minutes later, Paul rushes through the revolving doors and glares at the two boys sitting on a nearby bench.  After being yelled at by Paul, the entirety of their management team, Toys R Us’ security (Louis will later complain that they should’ve taken advantage of conveniently running into the largest toy store in America by doing some shopping), their hotel’s security, and Paul again, they finally make it up to Louis and Harry’s hotel room.

“Lou, let me take a look at that cut, yeah?  I don’t know how you managed to hide it from all of them.”

“A well-placed jumper works wonders, mate.”  He hikes up the back of his jacket and shirt and turns around so Liam can inspect the damage.

“Holy shit.”  Liam doesn’t really swear, but the curse feels right on his tongue given the circumstance.  “That is _vicious_ , Lou, God, you might need stitches.  How are you feeling?  How did you even walk up here, Christ.”

“M’not quite sure, actually.”  He sways again, more dangerously this time.  “I’m feeling a bit light-headed though, actually, think you can grab me a glass of water?”

Liam walks over to the suite’s little kitchenette and grabs a plastic cup from under the sink.  He hears someone, Harry, unlock the door and come into the room, and he turns around just in time to see Louis crumble to the ground.


End file.
